Commentary: Mariners’ Randy Johnson became MLB’s most-feared pitcher before exit

SEATTLE – If he could have had a two-sided cap, he would have.

He is as adamant about that as he is sensitive.

Randy Johnson, perhaps the greatest left-handed pitcher of all time, wants it to be clear how much he treasured his time in Seattle – even if he went into the Baseball Hall of Fame as an Arizona Diamondback.

The Big Unit spoke with the media Monday after the Mariners announced they will retire his No. 51 in 2026. This will come a year after they retire Ichiro’s No. 51, which comes in August.

Any rational fan can understand why Johnson, 61, would enter Cooperstown as a representative of his old Arizona club. He won four of his five Cy Young awards with the D-backs and was named World Series co-MVP in 2001. But it still bothers him that some feel he holds the M’s in lower esteem after ostensible acrimony led to him being traded away in 1998. Arizona is where Johnson best showcased his generational ability. Seattle, however, is where he developed it.

“Now if we could split the hat on my plaque and put a little bit of an ‘M’ and a little bit of an ‘A,’ well, I don’t know if we could have done that, you know, but I didn’t ever try to disrespect the Seattle Mariners,” Johnson said. “I think that’s the one thing that’s always kind of bothered me.”

At some point next year, Johnson’s number will rest alongside those of Ken Griffey Jr., Edgar Martinez and Ichiro. But of those four, he will be the only one whose best years came somewhere other than Seattle.

Still, regardless of where you live or grew up, it’s almost impossible to think of Randy and not picture him in a Mariners uniform. For a decade, the 6-foot-10 southpaw might as well have been a part of this city’s skyline.

June 2 of 1990? Johnson threw a no-hitter vs. the Tigers at the Kingdome. The 1993 and ’94 seasons? He finished second and third in the Cy Young voting, respectively. The 1995 season? He ran away with the Cy Young Award while leading the league in strikeouts for the fourth consecutive year – and he threw a complete game in a regular-season tiebreaker win over the Angels, which gave Seattle the AL West crown.

This is when Johnson blossomed from the erratic pitcher the Expos drafted in the second round to the most-feared hurler in the game.

“What I did in Seattle was significant. It really was,” Johnson said. “Every fifth day, I gave everything I had. I really did. I worked really hard.”

If there is any hostility from fans toward Johnson, it has little to do with which team he picked for the Hall of Fame and mostly to do with what happened in ’98. Randy was hoping for a new contract going into the season, and there’s more than a couple of people who think he tanked when he didn’t.

After all, his 1997 ERA was 2.28, and his 1998 ERA with Mariners was 4.33. His ERA with Houston after he got traded at the end of July was 1.28.

Johnson went the distance 100 times in his career, and he often does the same in a Q&A setting. His answers Monday were in the five - to 10-minute range, making it difficult to ask about any conspiracies about his ’98 season. But he did open with saying that he did not leave the Mariners’ organization.

“I was traded. I didn’t walk away. I think that is something I hear from fans still occasionally,” Johnson said. “It would have been great if they said, ‘Hey, we got a contract extension for you.’ ”

But that didn’t happen, and perhaps the joke is on the Mariners. What followed were four Cy Young awards with the Diamondbacks from 1999-2002. Perhaps tension prevented one of the all-time great Mariners from having his number retired at T-Mobile Park earlier (Johnson retired in 2009), but that moment is here now – and boy, is it deserving.

With apologies to Félix Hernández, no Mariner has been anywhere near as imposing on the mound as Randy. It’s unlikely that anybody will in most of our lifetimes.

The man who ended up with the second-most strikeouts in MLB history behind Nolan Ryan? The pitcher who racked up 303 wins? The force that finished in the top three in Cy Young voting nine times? His formative years came in Seattle.

Johnson had just about everybody’s number in his heyday. Time for his number to be immortalized in the Emerald City.